‘Women Are Mothers’ as the Worst Stereotype of All

‘Gravity of Tenderness’ by The Fabler.

‘The most globally pervasive of the harmful cultural practices […] is the stereotyping of women exclusively as mothers and housewives in a way that limits their opportunities to participate in public life, whether political or economic.’ (Raday about Article 5 CEDAW p. 671)

Some feminists have deemed women’s perceived responsibility for motherhood and caregiving the worst stereotype of all. At the same time, we currently observe a global rollback of women’s rights as authoritarianism is on the rise. Many governments push for a strengthening of ‘family values’ and higher birth rates and encourage women to live in traditional roles as housewives and mothers.

In light of these developments, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (‘CEDAW Committee’) commenced work on a new general recommendation on the elimination of gender stereotypes in 2022, which is scheduled for adoption in 2026. The new general recommendation employs the idea of an anti-stereotyping approach. This contribution engages with that approach and argues that the anti-stereotyping argument cannot exactly convince in a world where people are often attacked because of their gender even when they, in fact, conform to gender stereotypes. Instead, it can only be one strand of many in a structural solution to gender inequality.

What Are Gender Stereotypes?

To understand the CEDAW Committee’s goal, it is paramount to comprehend the concept of ‘gender stereotypes’. In its concept note for General Recommendation 41, the Committee relies on a scholarly definition of stereotype as ‘a generalized view or preconception of attributes or characteristics possessed by, or roles that should be performed by, members of a particular group’ (Cook and Cusack, p. 9).

The several different forms of gender stereotypes encompass, for instance, role-based stereotypes, which relate to specific expected behaviors. This includes seeing women as homemakers and caretakers, while men are expected to be breadwinners and providers. Sex stereotypes, conversely, are based on characteristics prescribed to a certain (biological) sex. They include preconceptions like ‘women are empathetic’ or ‘men are competitive’. Compounded stereotypes result from the intersection of several marginalized social groups, e.g., disabled women, older women, or trans women, leading to unique forms of stereotypes (Cusack, pp. 10-15). For example, lesbian women are often stereotyped as unfit mothers and immoral in character, turning around the most prevalent stereotype for heterosexual women (Undurraga, pp. 76-77).

It is noteworthy that stereotypes are most often binary, categorizing people along two sexes, female and male, understood in a biological-essentialist manner, and premised to be heterosexual. They exclude a plurality of gender identities, intersex identities, and sexual orientations. This binary reflects that gender stereotyping uses practices of ‘othering’, i.e. constructing women and gender non-conforming persons as ‘not male’ while framing them as enemies or victims.

Background on the Anti-Stereotyping Argument and the CEDAW Committee’s Work to Date

One of the few international rules explicitly mentioning stereotypes is Article 5 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (‘CEDAW’). It stipulates in relevant part that: ‘States Parties shall take all appropriate measures [t]o modify […] social and cultural patterns […] with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices […] which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women’.

Based on this rule, the CEDAW Committee argues in its concept note that eradicating gender stereotypes is  key to gender equality. This view has also been confirmed by feminist scholars, including Cook and Cusack and Timmer. Accordingly, the law must not rely on gender stereotypes for distinctions, e.g., deny a male police officer access to parental leave because women are perceived as primary caretakers for children, or deny a woman a promotion because she is deemed ‘too aggressive for a woman’. Instead of basing decisions about individual women on generalizations about women as a group, every person’s individualized and unique personality must be acknowledged, regardless of whether they do or do not comply with stereotypical expectations. Otherwise, individuals may be unfairly disadvantaged based on incorrect assumptions about them.

These ideas originated already in 1967 within the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, whose Article 3 demands the “eradication of prejudice […] based on the idea of the inferiority of women”. Similarly, in 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women adopted the Platform for Action in Beijing, which equally endorses the eradication of gender stereotypes in education, the media, and other fields (Annex II, paras. 33, 72, 183, 235). Other international provisions with similar content include Article 2(2) of the African Union’s Maputo Protocol and Article 8(b) of the Inter-American Belém do Pará Convention.

Given that the idea of gender stereotypes as the root cause of many human rights violations has been around for some decades, the CEDAW Committee has continuously discussed the impact of different stereotypes, e.g., in its State reports. Mentions range from preferred education for boys (para. 36) to female genital mutilation (para. 23), and discriminatory treatment of widows (para. 35) based on gender stereotypes.

Within its General Recommendation 3 of 1987, the CEDAW Committee for the first time raised concerns over the prevalence of “stereotyped conceptions of women” and the importance of Article 5 CEDAW in that regard. Moreover, in General Recommendation 25 of 2004, the CEDAW Committee stressed once again that the elimination of gender stereotypes is a main State obligation flowing from CEDAW (paras. 7, 38). Nevertheless, a full analysis of gender stereotypes and Article 5 CEDAW is lacking to date. Therefore, the goal of the new general recommendation on gender stereotypes is to define the scope of the obligation to eliminate gender stereotypes under Article 5 CEDAW and to provide guidance to States on adopting laws and policies in order to counter the harmful impacts of such perceptions. The concept note, in particular, relates the obligation under Article 5 CEDAW to other obligations, e.g. in the field of anti-discrimination, access to justice, gender-based violence, political participation, education, employment, and more. The general recommendation will define key terms, show how and in which aspects of life preconceived notions hinder gender equality, and explore possible State actions to address the issue.

The Limits of the Anti-Stereotyping Argument

The anti-stereotyping argument stipulates that harmful stereotypes and wrongful stereotyping must be eliminated (paras. 20-30). The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights held that ‘a gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and/or make choices about their lives’. In a similar vein, Undurraga writes that one should ‘differentiate […] stereotypes that help to build authentic, non-essentialist, and dignified subjectivities from those stereotypes that hinder them’ (p. 85). Accordingly, all gender stereotypes which perpetuate situations of inequality for an individual person must, pursuing to this argument, be eradicated.

However, the benchmark is always just an individual case of discrimination. While this approach captures singular instances of stereotyping, it ignores the structural side of the problem. Therefore, several feminist scholars oppose the very argument that eliminating stereotypes is pivotal to ending gender inequality. For instance, MacKinnon argues that ‘[t]he anti-stereotyping approach […] sets itself more strongly against illusions than realities, in that it prohibits punishing those who don’t fit a picture of a sex, rather than those who are routinely denigrated and devalued for fitting that picture’ (p. 93). In fact, anti-stereotyping theory struggles to account for persons who are assaulted purely because of their membership in a particular group, even if they, in fact, conform to societal expectations. It remains blind to the overall power dynamics at play by reducing the issue to a case-by-case analysis.

Take, for example, the stereotype that women should be mothers and caretakers. The elimination of this preconception may help a father who seeks paternity leave, or a woman who wishes to advance her career but is denied a promotion based on the stereotype that she might become a mother soon. Yet, it overlooks the lived realities of many others. Women who do take on motherhood and care responsibilities remain marginalized, whether the stereotype of the ‘caring mother’ does exist or not. Studies suggest, for instance, that pregnant people are about three times more likely to experience physical and sexual violence than nonpregnant people. Moreover, pregnant women are more likely to die of homicide than of obstetric complications. The leading cause for this is intimate partner violence and people’s desire to control a woman’s reproductive choice. As we can see, the patriarchal system continues to punish women for becoming mothers.

The elimination of stereotypes, according to this critique, can only lead to formal equality without regard to the substantive outcome, and is elitist and individualistic (Young, pp. 208-209). It might tackle legal decisions based on generalizations but ignores persons who are marginalized because of their gender, and not because of stereotypes. Alternatively, critics propose a focus on substantive or transformative equality, dismantling power structures and prohibiting actions that reinforce such societal power dynamics or gender inequality on a broader scale (Fredman, pp. 727-728; Timmer, pp. 733-734). Instead of attempting to prohibit stereotypes per se, power dynamics, which hinder gender equality, should be countered on multiple levels.

Therefore, it is paramount that the CEDAW Committee in its new general recommendation is mindful of the limits of the anti-stereotyping approach. While it is important to tackle deeply rooted societal expectations which perpetuate patriarchal power dynamics, it is equally relevant to account for structural problems which persist independent of the existence of gender stereotypes.

What’s Next?

At the time of writing, the CEDAW Committee just concluded its 92^nd session, held in Geneva from 2 to 20 February 2026. The Committee previously announced that a public draft of General Recommendation 41 will be published in early 2026 – likely after some finishing touches following the discussions during the Committee’s session. It is also noteworthy that several NGOs, for example, the European Network of Migrant Women and the Dutch CEDAW Network, as well as national human rights institutions have submitted written contributions to the new general recommendation. They highlight, for instance, that the recommendation should consider structural aspects of gender inequality and take a position on the influence of gender stereotypes on the development of new technology, specifically artificial intelligence.

Finally, a last interesting observation on the CEDAW Committee shall not be withheld. Namely, the Committee has over time become more and more progressive with its interpretations of CEDAW, despite the fact that CEDAW itself is binary in many ways, including in Article 5 CEDAW, which speaks of ‘men and women’. For instance, the Committee developed an inclusive and intersectional approach to rights violations, and has previously discussed concerns relating, among others, to members of the LGBTQAI+ community (para. 18). This intersectional approach was also taken up in the concept note for General Recommendation 41. There, the Committee notes that intersecting factors must be considered when assessing gender stereotypes, and in particular mentions the example of ‘corrective rape’ due to a woman’s perceived sexual orientation, as a stereotype to be combated (para. 60). In scholarship, some have argued that Article 5 CEDAW should be interpreted to foresee the elimination of all gender stereotypes, not only those relating to women in the biological-essentialist sense (Gilleri, p. 162-170).

These developments give hope that the CEDAW Committee will, in fact, not solely rely on a duty to eliminate binary and individualistic stereotypes but may consider the structural part of the problem. This contribution has shown that the mere elimination of gender stereotypes falls short of combating attacks against persons because of their gender, independent of whether they comply with stereotypical expectations. Eliminating stereotypes can therefore only be one strand by virtue of which the goal of gender equality is achieved. The new general recommendation is a chance to call for intersectional and substantive equality, combating the structural perpetuation of patriarchal power structures.